Belis First Family

Actually, it's First Families, as I'm descended from many families that immigrated to Australia from the British Isles. Rather disappointingly none of my ancestors came from anywhere but the British Isles.

In 1849 Catherine IVORY arrived with the other Irish potato famine orphans.

During the mass immigration to Australia in the 1840 & 1850's another 14 of my ancestors arrived from primarily Scotland with a few English, Irish and Manx. The families GAHAN, ANDERSON, IRELAND and McGUFFIE also arrived sometime in this period but I'm yet to work out when or how. There is now a separate set of web pages on this site specifically for the LEARMONTH family.

I gathered most of the information from birth, death and marriage certificates, LDS films of parish records, NSW State Archives films of parish records, films of the Colonial Secretary's papers, and NSW immigration records on film. Yep, that's a lot of getting sea sick on the ole microfilm reader. In a few fortunate cases I have managed to swap data with other researchers who have found different pieces of the same puzzle to whom I am grateful

I created this web site in the hope that people with interests in the same families will contact me and we can solve some of the riddles together. Well that's the plan anyway. (giggle, giggle). If you have an interest, or even if you only think you might be related to these families, please contact me. I would love to hear from you. Warm regards, Beli.